Adrian Michaels is Group Foreign Editor at the Telegraph Media Group. You can write to adrian.michaels@telegraph.co.uk and follow @adrianmichaels on Twitter.

Saucy Silvio and the conspiracy mentality

The photographs that Silvio Berlusconi did not want you to see are out. A photographer took them with a long lens outside one of the Italian prime minister's many residences and they were then suppressed by Berlusconi with a court order. El Pais has put them up online. (I don't think the Spanish newspaper is in need of the publicity, but they are here. Be warned, they contain the odd shot of what is known in David Carradine circles as "other parts of the body".)

Will Silvio Berlusconi shrug off the latest scandal? Photo: Reuters

Berlusconi has been surrounded by scandal for so many years, that I am sure he will successfully shrug this one off. Here is a man who has been investigated multiple times for fraud, tax evasion, bribery and other crimes. He has been convicted but had convictions quashed or expired because of statutes of limitation (after he has rewritten the statutes accordingly). He is currently evading criminal cases because he passed a law to make it impossible to try certain figures in Italy, including the prime minister.

But he has always managed to convince his vast number of supporters in Italy that he is the victim of a conspiracy – Leftwing and Communist agents in the judiciary, police, press, TV and elsewhere are telling lies. They have even been feeding his wife lies, and that is why she has fallen for their tricks and wants to divorce him.

A couple of photos of young cavorting guests will make Berlusconi fans only more in love with their man. What a guy! He really knows how to throw a party! He wouldn't be such a cool dude without that reliable eye for the ladies!

Berlusconi peddles conspiracy theories to an entirely credulous Italian public. In Italy, perfectly intelligent, rational and charming people from all across the political spectrum, in business and everywhere else, frequently spout utter nonsense about the true reasons for events. Italians see conspiracy everywhere. The national sport is dietrologia, which means "behind-ology" and describes the science of never believing the obvious, of looking for other explanations.

Berlusconi has for example said that The Times newspaper, in London, wrote negative editorials about him and his contacts with numerous young girls, not because a septuagenarian prime minister should carry himself with more dignity and stop making his country a laughing stock, but because the newspaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is angry, Berlusconi says, because Berlusconi's government recently increased charges on Sky subscribers in Italy. Sky is also owned by Murdoch and of course is locked in battle with Berlusconi's own television stations.

I do not know Rupert Murdoch but I am going to stick my neck out here – there is no link between The Times editorial and Sky's Italian business. But I am not one of Berlusconi's Italian supporters, and the story was told for them alone.